4 ms·
This is so true. Example: My iphone died recently, so while waiting for the 4s to come out I used a 3-4 year old Sony Ericson lying around the office. It has
by delackner 15y ago
This is so true. Example: My iphone died recently, so while waiting for the 4s to come out I used a 3-4 year old Sony Ericson lying around the office. It has so many buzzword features! It even has dedicated media playback buttons on the outside! Yet how do you call someone? It takes 6 button presses. Press down > click on first name > Call > Voice Call/Video Call/PushTalk > No Message/Create Message > Call/Call with ID/Call with no ID/Country code
That's insane. It is like no one ever tried to make a phone call with their phone when designing it.
Don't get me started on the text editing screen. It is a modal text area that flips between movement within the whole text and movement within the single word you are editing. I love Vim, and I still hate this text entry method.
This whole topic has been covered many times before, but its roots are various and you could write a book on the subject of why most firms (both japanese and non) are just so horrible at consumer software interface design.
Some people suggest that it is just that the Japanese firms were only really good at hardware, but that rings false. I've seen a lot of really horribly designed Japanese computers and mobile phones before the iPhone came out, even just judging the hardware by itself on simplicity and reliability.
- ilamont 15y agoUI design by engineers. It's been a problem for most (but not all) Japanese hardware products I've owned, including every single device with a lens or screen attached.
- angus77 15y agoWow. I've only owned Toshiba phones (on both au and SoftBank) before I got my HTC Desire, and making a call was always a matter of clicking the 電話帳 button and selecting the name. Although I've used other people's phones plenty of times, and it was always pretty much the same. I've never used anyone's Sony Ericsson, though.
- delackner 15y agoJust tapping the name actually placed the call? What an idea. Just for fun, I looked at an older Docomo model on my desk by NEC. It is even worse: Phonebook > Search > List of ways to search, NONE of which is just "show me my phonebook". Let's try name lookup > Enter a string to search for > Search results > Choose a result > Dial. Let's try Group > List of Groups > First Group > Choose name > Dial
- kalleboo 15y agoJust tried the docomo NEC (N-02A) I had lying around. Down arrow > Left right to pick the first kana of their name > select name > Press dial button. Not that bad, but a far far cry from the european Sony Ericsson's smart phonebook. Right now I have a SH-12C as my main phone, and it's basically an Android phone with a kickass screen and all the crazy japanese features jammed in it (1seg, mobile suica, 3D camera+screen, privacy veil, etc). And it's great - Google software really makes those features finally worth it. There's even an Android widget to display your Suica balance.
- aphexairlines 15y agoSharp 943SH (SoftBank). Press down (this loads the phone book), keep pressing down until you hit the right name (or type part of the name), then press the call button.
- delackner 15y ago(Addendum: Several people pointed out a handy shortcut for japanese feature-phones to access your phonebook: pressing down). This was not immediately obvious to me because the phone I'm looking at has its down button marked "." and its up button marked with a little icon depicting an open book. While I'm embarassed to have not discovered this shortcut, I think it only adds to my general point that a button labelled simply "." was supposed to suggest "phone book" while the "open book" icon leads to an endless labyrinth of options, none of which is just to look at your phone book.